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Node 8: Out with the old and in with the patchable
Starting tomorrow, Node 8 is officially unsupported. What does this mean for Node developers ? The circuit breakers for Node 8 access don’t immediately turn off — you can still download it and use it in your source code, but be mindful that the Node team will no longer be “maintaining” the runtime. This means that new features and bug fixes will no longer be applied to the version, and this includes security patches. It’s easy to assume that the biggest disadvantages of using an outdated language or runtime version are the hit to performance, but the dangerous risks are really in the security patches (or lack thereof).
Lucky for us, the Node team has a quick turnaround of version releases: every 6 months we get a new version, but that means versions are deprecated at the same rate too. The following is the most up-to-date calendar of the release schedule:
With Node 8 reaching end-of-life, the supported versions of Node will be Node 10, 12, and 13 — until April when Node 14 is released and will replace Node 13 as the “current” version.
Generally changes are expected to live in a Current release for at least 2 weeks before being backported.
